Basketball: THE match countdown clock read 0.00 as the young UCC Demons guard, Shane Coughlan, went to the free-throw line in overtime of yesterday's ESB men's Cup final against Star of the Sea in Tallaght. The time remaining in the game was estimated by the game officials to be approximately one tenth of a second but it did not register.

In a game of complex timing rules designed to produce black and white decisions, the luxury of the suspended time afforded by the awarding of free throws seemed utterly incongruous.

Coughlan missed the first attempt but without flinching, maintained his pre -shot routine for the second effort which was perfection. The ball left his hands on a perfect arc and dropped through the hoop without touching the rim.

There was no time to restart the game and yet the scoreboard clicked on to signal an 84-83 victory to the Corkmen who collectively swamped the match Most Valuable Player, Coughlan, in an instant explosion of celebration.

But many neutrals were shaking their head and even some of the match officials expressed bemusement because the incident which led to the match-deciding foul, with approximately one tenth of a second remaining, was hard to fathom.

The man at fault was Star of the Sea's Pat Campolieta and no one disputed that he made an illegal challenge on Coughlan in an area of the court which was far from threatening to either basket.

With the match clock running down in one tenth of a second fractions and fast approaching zero, the referees, Joe Robinson and Dave Collings, blew almost simultaneously with the final buzzer.

Robinson and Collings were in unison about their certainty that the foul came just before the clock hit zero.

"Whistle then buzzer," said Robinson afterwards. Collings agreed, as did match commissioner Chris Roche, who estimated there was between one and two tenths of a second remaining when the incident occurred.

What everyone wanted to know was what possessed Campolieta to foul Coughlan so clumsily when there was not a hint of a threat and the clock was a blink of an eye away from sending the match to a second period of overtime.

"To be honest, I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding how it all happened," said the Italian-American afterwards.

His confusion could be partly explained by a rule in the American professional game whereby if there is less than four tenths of a second remaining, the match is deemed to be over. But in Ireland, no such rule exists.

It was another illustration of how the game of basketball so frequently produces dramatic and often controversial conclusions, especially in the cup. UCC Demons have been at the wrong end of their fair share of such heartbreaking moments in the past and it was impossible to begrudge them their success.

They had trailed by 11 points during the first quarter of the game yesterday and their opponents looked imperious at that stage. But Demons wrestled control of the game coming up to half-time and only trailed 38-36 to John Leahy's last-second basket from the corner for Star.

In the second half the game opened out and developed a helter-skelter rhythm which seemed to suit the Corkmen more. They scored the first six points of the second half to take a four-point lead and they led narrowly, for the most part until Star's Adrian Fulton tied the teams with two and a half minutes remaining in ordinary time.

From there it was a tale of free throws with James Singleton for Demons tying the teams at 73-all with 30 seconds left to send the match to overtime.

The added five minutes were largely dictated by Demons but Star, with a three-point play in the final minute by Gareth Maguire, managed to tie the teams again at 83-apiece before the bizarre conclusion for which the 2003 final will long be remembered.

Earlier, in the day the women's final produced one of the most one-sided contests in the history of the play-offs as University of Limerick defeated Wildcats from Waterford by 76 points to 48.

Limerick outscored their opponents in each of the four quarters of the game and the Most Valuable Player award went to Michelle Aspell, who scored 15 of her eventual 29-point total in the first seven minutes.